olitics: Sen. Dick Durbin, who says Republicans have shoved attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch to the "back of the bus," once filibustered and opposed the GOP nominations of black and Latino appeals court judges. Last week, Durbin accused Republicans of forcing Lynch, President Obama's African-American nominee to replace Eric Holder, to "sit in the back of the bus" until a vote on a controversial sex trafficking bill could be held. That thinly veiled reference to the moment in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to move from her seat in a Montgomery, Ala., bus was meant to paint Senate Republicans as...

In an interview with The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas published on Sunday, Milwaukee Co., WI Sheriff David Clarke cautioned against making the likes of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown into civil rights figures, arguing doing so desecrates the legacy of figures of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, including Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr.

On this Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, instead of listening to irreverent race-baiters like “Reverends” Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, let us imagine what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his colleague Rosa Parks might say about race relations in America. First, Dr. King would remind us that in previous decades, white people were never indicted, let alone convicted and incarcerated for willfully killing black people. White lynch mobs would preen for cameras following their savage murders of black people, brazenly smiling because they knew that no white jury would convict them. King would retell the trial of the...

Thieves have struck the apartment complex where Rosa Parks lived when she made history by refusing to give up her seat to a white person on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, police said Tuesday. Detectives are seeking suspects who ripped and stole copper wiring from Parks' former apartment and several other now-vacant units being renovated, Montgomery police Sgt. Denise Barnes said. Workers discovered the thefts Monday. Police believe the crimes happened between 4 p.m. Friday and Monday, Barnes said. "Vandals came in and pilfered it. They went in and tore out the walls and they stole the copper pipes...

More than half a century after she refused to give up her seat on an Alabama city bus, Rosa Parks has an immovable place in the U.S. Capitol — the first black woman to be honored with a statue there. President Barack Obama and congressional leaders from both parties said at an unveiling Wednesday that the depiction was fitting: Parks is shown seated, hands clasped in front of her, eyes fixed forward.

Today is the anniversary of Rosa Parks’ refusal to sit in the back of the bus in Montgomery, Ala. And this photograph of President Obama sitting on that exact same bus 57 years later is a poignant reminder of just how much America has changed in half a century.

How pathetic. Jim Clyburn chose Martin Luther King Day to smear Mitt Romney with the shop-worn charge of racism. Straining absurdly to make his accusation, the South Carolina Dem, appearing on Al Sharpton's MSNBC show, somehow managed to equate Romney's criticism of the politics of envy with the people who sought to keep Rosa Parks in the back of the bus.

Pelosi Fires Back at Gingrich By Nell Henderson House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi fired back at fellow former Speaker Newt Gingrich Sunday morning for his disavowal of a TV ad calling for action on climate change that the pair filmed together. Mr. Gingrich, chasing the Republican presidential nomination, has called the 2008 ad “probably the dumbest single thing I’ve done in recent years.” Ms. Pelosi, of California, asked about the comments on CNN’s State of the Union, had a tart riposte: “He has been fined $300,000 dollars by the ethics committee, you’d think he’d consider that a big mistake.” CNN...

...she wrote a detailed and harrowing account of nearly being raped by a white neighbor who employed her as a housekeeper in 1931. The six-page essay, written in her own hand many years after the incident, is among thousands of her personal items currently residing in the Manhattan warehouse and cramped offices of Guernsey's Auctioneers, which has been selected by a Michigan court to find an institution to buy and preserve the complete archive. Civil rights historian Danielle McGuire said she had never before heard of the attempted rape of Parks and called the find among Parks' papers astounding. It...

He said Republicans had driven the economy into a ditch and then stood by and criticized while Democrats pulled it out. Now that progress has been made, he said, "we can't have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don't mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back."... Obama can "take his endorsement and shove it," declared Democrat Frank Caprio, battling Republican-turned-independent Lincoln Chafee in a gubernatorial race rated tight in the polls. Chafee endorsed Obama during the 2008 campaign for the White House.

Is Elvira Arellano â€” the recently deported Mexican illegal alien â€” the new Rosa Parks? Some of her supporters describe her this way. But Arellano's credentials as a "role model," to say the least, fall short. Indeed, even some "immigrant rights activists" find the comparison embarrassing. A check of the Web sites of the National Council of La Raza and the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund finds no statement one way or the other concerning Arellano. Rosa Parks, a black woman, was born in 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama â€” that is, Tuskegee, Alabama, United States of America. She thus...

Family Members Object to Rosa Parks' Will Tuesday May 2, 2006 3:01 AM DETROIT (AP) - A dozen nieces and nephews of civil rights icon Rosa Parks have filed an objection to her will in hopes of gaining control of the use of her name and image. The family members, who have been feuding for years with the people Parks appointed to handle her affairs, filed the legal challenge Friday. ``We still are very open to talk settlement in this case, if for no other reason than both sides have a deep respect for Ms. Parks,'' Frederick Toca Jr., an...

Briton sits out racism tribute By Harry Mount in New York (Filed: 03/12/2005) A British woman has outraged New Yorkers by refusing to give up a bus seat set aside to honour the civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks. Fiona Humphreys, 55, from Bristol, was told she was sitting in a symbolic seat kept empty in honour of the 50th anniversary of the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man in Alabama. Mrs Parks's refusal to budge on Dec 1, 1955, helped spark the civil rights movement in America. But Mrs Humphreys, travelling up Fifth...

President Signs H.R. 4145 to Place Statue of Rosa Parks in U.S. Capitol Room 350 Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building 10:33 A.M. EST THE PRESIDENT: Welcome. Please be seated. Thank you all for being here. Laura and I thank you for joining us on this special day. Fifty years ago an African American woman named Rosa Parks helped set in motion a national movement for equality and freedom when she refused a bus driver's order to give her seat to a white man. The bill I'm about to sign calls for a statue of Rosa Parks to be placed...

President Bush and first Lady Laura Bush attended and spoke at World AIDS day in Washington. The President signed a Bill authorizing a statue of civil rights leader Rosa Parks be placed in the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall. The President also met Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick the Archbishop of Washington at the White House This evening the President and First Lady attended and participated in the Pageant of Peace program on The Ellipse near the White House during which the National Christmas Tree was lit. Yesterday the First Lady made a visit to the Church of the Epiphany in Washington,...

December marks 50 years since Rosa Parks sat down on that bus in Montgomery and the young Dr. Martin Luther King emerged as a prophet for the civil rights movement. How far have we come as a nation since then? The movement ended legal apartheid in America. African-Americans have a right to sit anywhere on that bus, to use the restaurants and libraries, to go to the same schools. Separate-but-equal has been condemned by the courts; integration and equal opportunity is the law of the land. And African-Americans have the right to vote, backed by a Voting Rights Act that...

The world knew Rosa Parks as a civil-rights icon: the quiet, shy, unassuming seamstress who on Dec. 1, 1955, refused to surrender her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., city bus to a white man, as local law required. Her arrest led to a 380-day bus boycott, a U.S. Supreme Court decision that desegregated public transportation in the city, mass protests that catapulted Martin Luther King Jr. to fame, and wide-ranging changes in the social order. That part of her story most everyone seems to know. But, unknown to many, before she was a civil-rights catalyst, she was a devoted Christian...

BERKLEY, Mich. (AP) — A black parent and the NAACP are criticizing a middle school's choice to perform a song that they say glorifies slavery. The song, "Pick a Bale of Cotton," is on the folk music choir program Wednesday at predominantly white Anderson Middle School in the Berkley School District. The song's lyrics include, "Jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton. Gotta jump down, turn around, Oh Lordie, pick a bale a day." Greg Montgomery said he complained to school officials, and when he was dissatisfied with their response, decided to pull his 11-year-old daughter China from...

RUSH: Seems I've heard this before. Has Clinton not told this story before? It's hard to remember. But here's Bill Clinton during his eulogy for Rosa Parks yesterday in New Fallujah. CLINTON: I remember as if it were yesterday that fateful day 50 years ago. I was a nine-year-old southern white boy who road a segregated bus every single day of my life. And I sat in the front. Black folk sat in the back. When Rosa showed us that black folks didn't have to sit in the back anymore, two of my friends and I who strongly approved of...

When the late Rosa Parks was laid to rest Wednesday at Detroit’s Woodlawn Cemetery, Americans also paid their last respects to the brand of civil-rights activism that she embodied. By refusing to yield her seat to a white man in the front of a segregated Montgomery, Alabama bus on December 1, 1955, Parks (who died October 24 at age 92) both launched and epitomized a dignified, determined fight against hardened bigotry. It spread from the ultimately successful, 381-day Montgomery bus boycott, to sit-ins at Whites-Only lunch counters, to Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, to President Lyndon...

I never thought I would be defending Bill Clinton on FreeRepublic. Mark this date as an historic moment. Clinton might have actually told the truth. From the text of his Rosa Parks funeral speech (which, of course, he managed to make about himself) CLINTON: I remember, as if it were yesterday, that fateful day 50 years ago. I was a 9-year-old southern white boy who rode a segregated bus every single day of my life. I sat in the front. Black folk sat in the back. When Rosa showed us that black folks didn't have to sit in the back...

There's a reason thousands of people turned out for Rosa Parks' funeral yesterday. On Dec. 1, 1955, when she refused to lift her bottom from a bus seat in Montgomery so that a white man could put his down, American history was cut into two parts - before the civil rights movement and after it. Parks had no idea that her refusal would become a standard by which the nonviolent movement would judge itself as it grew to take on all of the grand dragons of Southern segregation. Yet it is important to understand that Rosa Parks, the young Martin...

If you reside in Detroit, as I do, your radio and TV broadcast airwaves are dominated by live coverage of Rosa Parks' funeral. All other programming is pre-empted -- so we can be lectured by racists and race merchants. Right now, I'm listening to Louis X a/k/a Louis Farrakhan. Why is this racist loon a prominent speaker at this woman's funeral? If he had it his way, Catholics and other Christians, Jews, Whites, Asians, Gays, Arabs, and anyone not Black Muslim would not be riding in the back of the bus: they'd be dead. Is Rosa Parks' funeral the place...

DETROIT, United States (AFP) - Former president Bill Clinton and African-American leaders joined thousands of mourners who swayed in their pews, singing "We Shall Overcome" and other gospel standards in a final tribute to Rosa Parks at the funeral of the civil rights icon. Thousands who were unable to squeeze into the huge church's overflow rooms waited patiently outside for a chance to say goodbye to Parks, known as the "mother" of the US civil rights movement, who died on October 24 aged 92. Inside the church, soul music legend Aretha Franklin hushed the assembly with her moving rendition of...

Rosa Park's legacy should not be compromised by civil rights leaders By Kevin Fobbs What Detroit and the nation saw with the funeral of civil rights legend Rosa Parks was not a celebration of her sainted effort to sit down for the freedom of generations to follow, but a marathon of speeches which were tied more to an agenda of liberal politics and causes than to the very simple, very heroic and very noble act which launched a civil rights revolution. I was perplexed by the length as much as I was mystified by many of the messages which were...

DETROIT - A soaring rendition of "The Lord's Prayer" moved thousands of mourners at the funeral of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks on Wednesday, with a preacher bidding: "Mother Parks, take your rest." Former President Clinton, his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and hundreds of other mourners paid their respects at Parks' open casket before the start of the funeral service that included the prayer in song by soprano Brenda Jackson. Those in the audience held hands and sang "We Shall Overcome" as family members filed past the casket before it was closed just before noon. Bishop Charles Ellis III of...

We stand on the shoulders of giants, and one of those, the diminutive Rosa Parks, was honored by the American people this week, as her body lay in the Capitol Rotunda and thousands walked to pay their respects. Even as we honor Rosa Parks for her courage and her historic commitment, we must not romanticize her mission. She was not an innocent seamstress when she refused to give up that seat on the bus in Montgomery, Ala. She was a freedom fighter, an officer of the NAACP at a time when the organization was banned from most parts of the...

Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree and other supporters of reparations for Tulsa's 1921 Race Riot promised Sunday to continue their quest despite continued setbacks. "It's Greenwood time, it's Tulsa time . . . it's time to be paid for Tulsa's 1921 Race Riot, time to bring Greenwood back," Ogletree said during a three-hour event at Sanctuary Evangelistic Church, 1228 E. Fifth St. The program, which featured Ogletree; U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.; and Chicago Alderman Dorothy Tillman, was billed as a congressional hearing but sounded more like a revival meeting. About 10 of the 97 remaining black survivors of the...

In a ghoulish exploitation of the memory of a secular saint, Democrats seem intent on using Rosa Parks to attack Sam Alito. A few minutes ago, Jesse Jackson stated that Alito is a "states rights man" whereas Rosa Parks was the victim of states rights. Now, Chuck Schumer, apparently using the same DNC playbook,wondered whether Alito: "will use his seat to reverse much of what Rosa Parks put in place." Shameless.

Let the record show that at 10:47 AM on the day of Sam Alito's nomination, Jesse Jackson lumped Alito with the worst of Jim Crow. Speaking of Rosa Parks, Jackson said: "The laws that Rosa Parks fought against were based on states rights. Alito is a states rights person. The struggle continues."

Rosa Parks: Where have you gone? By Horace Cooper Oct 30, 2005 Contributing Columnist Like Paul Simons lament for Joe DiMaggio, a nation turns its lonely eyes to Rosa Parks, an authentic American hero who passed away this week. She was a model of virtue a legend, one of TIME magazines 100 Most Important People of the Century, a hero the likes of which well not see again soon. Her path to glory had humble beginnings. She was an ordinary woman a seamstress in fact who did the extraordinary. Born Rosa Lee McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, she grew up on...

At least that's the word I got from the friend of someone who knows someone in the WH who knows. Okay, I realize this is not a great source -- so please go easy -- but it does sound plausible and a great way for the White House to honor Rosa Parks, an authentic african-american heroine, by nominating Janice Rogers Brown as the first african-american woman to the Supreme Court.

The celebration of Rosa Parks's extraordinary contribution to America presents an excellent opportunity for me to summon all the strength at my command so that I may shout at the top of my lungs: "Thank God Almighty for liberal judicial activism." I suppose this makes me a heretic in a town where radical right dogma reigns supreme, especially after the trashing of White House counsel and now-withdrawn Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers. But I'll still pay tribute to activist judges. After all, it was a default by elected leaders that led an "activist" Supreme Court to decide in 1956 that...

The passing of Rosa Parks and The Millions More March mark the ending of one era and perhaps the start of a new cycle in the long struggle of African peoples for justice and self-determination. A new movement moves to a higher level if it draws on history and uses that history and the best of its cultural traditions as guides through the current set of conditions. For example, one of the most poignant pictures aired in tribute to Rosa Parks shows her being hugged by Nelson and Winnie Mandela. A reading of our history reveals that two years after...

A closed casket bearing the body of Rosa Parks will be placed on a platform for public viewing inside the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building. U.S. Senate historian Richard Baker says Rosa Parks is the first private citizen in the United States to be accorded the honor...

Hundreds of people packed a historic church Friday to remember Rosa Parks, and a veteran of the Montgomery bus boycott encouraged them to carry on her legacy of civil rights activism. "Go back to wherever you came from and put it to action!" 94-year-old Johnnie Carr told the cheering, standing-room-only crowd at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, which was led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the boycott. Parks, who died Monday at 92 at her home in Detroit, ignited the boycott and the modern civil rights movement on Dec. 1, 1955, when she refused to...

Text size: Who will follow Rosa? By Tony SnowOct 28, 2005 Host, The Tony Snow Show WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Rosa Parks, the Jean D'Arc of the Civil Rights Movement, died this week at the age of 92. Unfortunately, the movement to which she had devoted her energies and name died long before. Parks famously refused to surrender her seat on the Cleveland Street bus in Montgomery, Ala., on a winter afternoon 50 years ago. Local officials booked her and fined her $10 plus $4 in court costs. She invited arrest to draw attention to the idiocy of enforced...

The death of Rosa Parks has reminded us of her place in history, as the black woman whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, in accordance with the Jim Crow laws of Alabama, became the spark that ignited the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Most people do not know the rest of the story, however. Why was there racially segregated seating on public transportation in the first place? "Racism" some will say — and there was certainly plenty of racism in the South, going back for centuries. But racially segregated...

Rosa Parks and history Oct 27, 2005 by Thomas Sowell The death of Rosa Parks has reminded us of her place in history, as the black woman whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, in accordance with the Jim Crow laws of Alabama, became the spark that ignited the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Most people do not know the rest of the story, however. Why was there racially segregated seating on public transportation in the first place? "Racism" some will say -- and there was certainly plenty of racism...

The death of Rosa Parks has reminded us of her place in history, as the black woman whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, in accordance with the Jim Crow laws of Alabama, became the spark that ignited the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Most people do not know the rest of the story, however. Why was there racially segregated seating on public transportation in the first place? "Racism" some will say -- and there was certainly plenty of racism in the South, going back for centuries. But racially segregated...

RICHMOND Former Virginia Attorney General and Republican nominee for Governor Jerry Kilgore today issued the following statement regarding the death of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks: "From the day she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, Rosa Parks has been rightly known as the 'Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.' Her death at age 92 reminds us that our society's links to a time period of open discrimination are not as distant as we would like them to be. And her example will always serve to remind us of the...

Officials, activists pay tribute to the late Rosa Parks As she had in life, Rosa Parks stopped traffic Tuesday. This time, traffic slowed to honor her civil-rights legacy. Along a stretch of the Santa Monica Freeway named after her, a handful of prominent black church leaders, politicians and community activists paid homage to the quiet and dignified seamstress who gave the nation pause in the cause for racial equality. Parks, 92, died of natural causes Monday at her home in Detroit. Drivers honked horns and transit workers stopped as local politicians laid a wreath below a green Rosa Parks Freeway...

Today: October 25, 2005 at 4:51:38 PDT Comments on the Death of Rosa Parks By The Associated Press ASSOCIATED PRESS Comments following the death of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks: "Rosa Parks was a woman of great courage, grace and dignity. Her refusal to be treated as a second class citizen on a Montgomery bus in 1955 struck a blow to racial segregation and sparked a movement that broke the back of Jim Crow. ... She was an inspiration to me and to all who work for the day when we will be one America. May God bless her soul...

You'd think a guy like Burch, who archives liberal media sources with his website, would do his own research, but I guess that's too much to ask. You'd also think he reasonably intelligent individual wouldn't jump to unfounded conclusions about his political rivals, especially the idea that they are racists. That too, seems too much to ask, as can be seen from this thread: -------------------------------------------------------- benburch (1000+ posts) Tue Oct-25-05 04:13 AM Original message Freepers and Rosa Parks? Anybody brave enough to look? Edited on Tue Oct-25-05 04:15 AM by benburch What choice bits of racism are they stooping to...

Today I want to salute a great American and a true hero of American history. Yesterday I posted a piece on the racial hatred that seems to permeate our culture today. Rosa Parks stood up against the racial hatred of her time and inspired generations to work toward a more integrated society where all people are treated equally. We have not yet reached this point but we must keep working through peaceful means. Anger never resolved anything. Thank you Rosa Parks for your bravery and inspiration during a time when this Nation needed someone to stand up for fairness and...

Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks has died, Local 4 has learned. Parks, 92, reportedly died around 7 p.m. Monday at St. John Hospital on Detroit's east side. Parks' refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955 landed her in jail and sparked a bus boycott that is considered the start of the modern civil rights movement. The bus is on display at the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn. Parks, was born on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Ala. She lived in Detroit.

<p>Wright participated in a service for the reinterment of the body of the boy with whom Wright, then 12, was sharing a bed in the Mississippi home of Wright's father 50 years ago. It was the night that lit the fuse of the civil rights revolution.</p>

"Several former presidents" -- but apparently not the current one -- will be invited to take part in a celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott. That's according to Weber Merritt Strategies, a Washington, D.C., public affairs firm hired by the Montgomery Improvement Association to publicize the commemoration of the boycott that helped launch the civil rights movement. The organized boycott of the city's segregated buses began on Dec. 5, 1955, in response to the Dec. 1 arrest of Rosa Parks - the seamstress who refused to give up her seat in the "whites-only" section of...

Civil-Rights Icon Rosa Parks Settles Suit DETROIT (Reuters) - Lawyers for civil-rights pioneer Rosa Parks have settled a long-running dispute over the use of her name in song by the hip-hop group OutKast. Under the out-of-court settlement announced on Thursday Parks, 92, will receive an undisclosed amount of money that means her "living and health needs ... will be secure," former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, her guardian, said. Medical records released earlier this year as part of the dispute revealed Parks is suffering from progressive dementia. She has rarely appeared in public in recent years. The settlement came with OutKast,...